Teacher Service on School Councils: Are Teachers Attracted to the Accountability of School-Based Decision Making?

Winter, Paul A.; Keedy, John L.; Newton, Rose Mary

This study examined teachers' attraction to school council service and factors that impacted that attraction. Participants were randomly selected public school teachers enrolled in graduate education courses at three Kentucky state universities. They performed three tasks. First, they completed a biographical form that yielded descriptive statistics and measures of seven teacher personal characteristics. Next, they read one of four content-validated versions of a formal job description for a teacher vacancy on the local school council. Each version emphasized one of two validated sets of school council job attributes (management or instructional leadership). Each of the four versions specified whether the principal was the council chair or a council member with a teacher serving as the chair. Finally, participants completed a two-item instrument that captured the degree of teacher attraction to the school council job depicted in the job description. Results indicated that teachers with greater numbers of dependent children and prior school council experience rated school council positions less favorably than did teachers with fewer dependent children and no experience on school councils. Results also revealed that the combined effects of dependent children and school council experience explained the 6.8 percent variance in teacher rating of a school council position. (Contains 56 references.) (SM)